California Preservation Program

About

In partnership with nineteen libraries and archives listed below, the California Preservation Program is undertaking a one-year (October 2010-September 2011) project to provide digitization and access services for historic California audiovisual recordings to serve as a prototype for an ongoing program. The goal is to develop a sample online database of film, video and audio recordings. The database will provide “glimpses and whispers” of our state’s rich audiovisual heritage with the implication that there is much more to be mined and discovered. We must save our audiovisual heritage before it is too late; historical recordings are threatened by fragile physical condition, format obsolescence and the lack of playback equipment.

The Project seeks to gather best archival practices for moving image and sound preservation and establish low-cost, practical, standards to help organizations move from the analog age to the digital age. Storage of files for preservation and access will be provided by the Internet Archive and the Online Archive of California for teaching, research and study. Funding was received from the California State Library and the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program at New York University.

Partner Libraries and Archives

• Autry National Center of the American West
• California College of the Arts Libraries
• California Historical Society
• California State Archives 
• California State Railroad Museum Library
• Caltech Archives
• Graduate Theological Union Library and Archives
• Ontario City Library, Robert E. Ellingwood Model Colony History Room
• Other Minds Archive
• Pepperdine University Special Collections and University Archives
• Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University
• Stanford University, Department of Special Collections: Manuscripts Division and University Archives
• The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley
• The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley
• Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley
• Media Resources Center, UC Berkeley
• UC Santa Barbara, Department of Special Collections
• UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
• University of San Francisco Library, Archives & Special Collections

Services

• Guidance on creation of good digital collections following NISO recommended practice
  • Intellectual property best practice
  • Descriptive, rights and technical metadata standards
  • File format recommendations for long-term preservation and access
  • Quality assurance for new files
• Coordinating and funding digitization with vendors
• Facilitating storage of files and associated metadata via third party repositories
• Recommending practices for digital audiovisual collection care and preservation

History

• 2007 California Preservation Survey of Moving Image and Recorded Sound Collections Summary
• 2007 California Preservation Survey Final Report

Contacts

Director: Barclay Ogden, California Preservation Program,bogden@calpreservation.org

Coordinator: Pamela Vadakan, California Preservation Program,pamelajean@berkeley.edu